Livy darling, it is a rank shame that I should be having such staving good times here, & you not having your share, your fair & rightful share in them. I can’t even send you your share by mail, for 20 letters wouldn’t tell it nor hold it.—even to-day’sⒶemendation share, let alone the rest.

To bunch it: I breakfasted with the Halstead family at noon; spent 3 hours in the pottery; dined atⒶemendation Mrs. Geo. Ward Nichols’s; spent a most shouting good lovely 3 ½ hours at Pitts Burt’s fireside; & then he brought me home, & I have just now got my clothes off. I was permitted What an immense satisfaction it was, to sit down in a home, with a pipe, & the family all around, & talk, & hear talk, & have an unconventional good time, after all these sterile centuries of hermit-life in hotels & the vapid buzz of empty strangers. I was stirred to the bottom with gratitude. “Damnation,” says said I, “this is what I like, Mrs. Burt.” And I felt, it, too. It was not one of these airy gilded nothings which one throws off just to show what he can do.

⟦Let me confess. I was hungry to talk, & I let the time all slip away without asking Mrs. Burt to play any music; I forgot to say I had spent a pleasant evening when I took my leave; & I forgot to thank Mrs. Nichols for her hospitality. I wish you or Lilly Warner would write & tell explain for me—or is it really necessary? No, dang it, it isn’t necessary. Burt said he would fix it himself.[⟧]

I wish I could take you up & set you down in the pottery, with leave to stay in there a week, & see what Mrs. Nichols & those other wonderful people have been doing. Well, anyway, I did the next best thing. I bought some pottery for you—don’t let George open the box without your personal superintendence when it comes—he mustn’t break those things. And there were two slender flower jugs or vases; I sent one to Susie Crane, & then I couldn’t make up my mind whether to send the other to mother or to Ida; but I finally concluded that maybe it was more in Ida’s line, so I sent it to her.

But the gem of all their creations they wouldn’t let me have. They had but a dozen specimens, & nobody can get a sample at any price. These things were just out of the oven—only a few days old. It is their supreme, their unspeakable, their indescribable triumph. All other pottery is but pottery beside it. They won’t sell it because they don’t know that they can repeat the effects—& if they can’t, whose purse will be long enough to buy this immortal dozen? They will know in a month if their secret is lost or not, & if it isn’t, I am to be informed early by letter.

They sell all their things too utterly cheaply—they’ll never come to be valued at such prices. So I have partly persuaded them to send a lot of crockery to Hartford or some other city & try a certain test-experiment which I have proposed—to determine whether I am right or not. So you & the Warners must no be careful & not seem to know anything about the Cincinnati prices of this kind of ware.

Well, I must turn in—for I have to get up at 6 in the morning. And I do love you, my darling.